Did Obama’s former investment play role in pressuring 4-star general to change testimony?

posted at 10:00 am on September 17, 2011 by Ed Morrissey

Earlier this week, Eli Lake reported that the four-star Air Force general in charge of US Space Command told a Congressional panel that the White House pressured him to change his testimony to favor a company that shelled out donations for Democrats. LightSquared wants to press forward on a project that the military fears will create serious interference with GPS systems, and General William Shelton was going to address those concerns with Congress before the White House tried to push him into saying a few nice words on behalf of their sponsor. A reminder:

The four-star Air Force general who oversees U.S. Space Command walked into a highly secured room on Capitol Hill a week ago to give a classified briefing to lawmakers and staff, and dropped a surprise. Pressed by members, Gen. William Shelton said the White House tried to pressure him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company tied to a large Democratic donor. …

According to officials familiar with the situation, Shelton’s prepared testimony was leaked in advance to the company. And the White House asked the general to alter the testimony to add two points: that the general supported the White House policy to add more broadband for commercial use; and that the Pentagon would try to resolve the questions around LightSquared with testing in just 90 days. Shelton chafed at the intervention, which seemed to soften the Pentagon’s position and might be viewed as helping the company as it tries to get the project launched, the officials said.

As it turns out, LightSquared is more than just a Democratic donor. The Lonely Conservative points us to a July 2011 article at The Huffington Post, in which it seems that Barack Obama himself has a personal interest in LightSquared:

When the Federal Communications Commission granted LightSquared Inc. expedited approval to launch a new wireless Internet service, some powerful voices in Washington expressed alarm, including the Pentagon and one-third of the U.S. Senate.

LightSquared’s bold $14 billion plan, its detractors said, could cripple GPS systems and threaten aviation safety, disrupt military and rescue operations and interfere with high-tech farming equipment and the everyday navigation devices used by millions. …

Several major Democratic campaign contributors and longtime Obama supporters have held investments in the company and its affiliates during its tangled decade of existence. They include Obama’s good friend and political donor Donald Gips, his former White House personnel chief, who now serves as U.S. ambassador to South Africa. Records show that Gips maintained an interest, worth as much as $500,000, as the FCC was weighing LightSquared’s request.

Obama himself was an early investor and came to the presidency a firm believer in expanding broadband. He remains close to other early investors, like Gips and investment manager George W. Haywood, inviting some to luxe social events at the White House and more intimate gatherings like a night of poker and beer.

Presidents put their investments into blind trusts when they take office in order to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. Well, most modern Presidents do, anyway. It seems that Obama considers himself an exception to this rule, or at the very least he did until April 2010. The Washington Post’s Michael Shear reported at that time that Obama had refused to establish a blind trust:

In fact, President Obama has rejected the approach taken by most of his predecessors in the modern era.

His personal wealth — which is rapidly growing — is not shielded from his view.

Why not?

Officially, the answer is that the president wanted more transparency in his personal finances — fitting in with his pledges to be the most open White House in history.

“The choice not to have a blind trust is an effort to be transparent about where his money is kept, and the public can see his latest financial disclosure documents, which we have made public and accessible on the Web site,” a senior White House official said.

Well, sort of. The records are not on line, but the White House website does have a request page, which promises to send a PDF of the financial disclosure forms quickly. I’ve requested a copy and will check to see whether Obama still holds any position with LightSquared. I’m going to guess no, only because it appears from Shear’s article that Obama converted most of his holdings into bonds in order to avoid the blind trust.

However, as the HuffPo report notes, that’s not the only problem in this scenario. It’s clear that even if Obama divested himself of LightSquared at some point, he has remained close to the other investors. If the White House pressured Shelton in order to benefit these investors, then we need to find out whether Obama gave that order himself on behalf of his cronies.

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He’s sitting with his rear on the desk. He’s got zero respect for that office. Zero.

JellyToast on September 17, 2011 at 5:21 PM

Exactly. Sitting on the desk made of wood from the HMS Resolute as if it were the hood of a Chevy. No respect for anyone or any thing but his own rediculous place in history.

Tuning Spork on September 17, 2011 at 7:28 PM

I agree. I saw a video of photos of him with his feet on the Resolute desk or sitting on it. In addition to doing this as a juvenile way of showing he’s the boss, I had to think it was also his way of showing disrespect to the Brits.

To heck with Shelton, I want to know if the White House pressured the FCC to fast-track LightSquared’s alteration of pre-established frequency utilization plans. The channels LightSquared wants to use were allocated for weak-signal satellite transmissions in order to avoid interfering with the adjacent GPS service. Putting high-powered terrestrial transmitters in that band was obviously going to cause problems, yet the FCC made the change anyway after a highly abbreviated comment period and field tests that were incomplete.

LightSquared says GPS receivers can be redesigned with tighter filters to eliminate the interference. Aside from the obsoleting of billions of dollars worth of existing receivers, this really isn’t technologically practical. Tighter filters introduce distortions in the received signal that reduce the accuracy of the position fix, which is why aviation GPS receivers were more effected by the interference than consumer receivers. (They have wider filters to produce more accurate navigation readings.) Loss of GPS fix in aviation receivers happened at distances of up to 10 miles from LightSquared transmitters in some tests.

Imagine an airliner trying to land in poor visibility, flying over a city full of LightSquared wireless Internet transmitters while approaching the landing field, and loosing its GPS location at that critical point as a result. The FCC’s actions make it likely that such scenarios would be common place.

This creature’s singular achievement would be that he has created a border between corruption and incompetence where there was none before, and then blurred it. If he’s doing it by design he’s a genius. If not he’s a blithering idiot. In either case something like an Obama wouldn’t be possible without the willing collaboration of hundreds, maybe thousands, of nihilistic media gatekeepers.

Pointing to bad behavior… I shan’t finish. This, although seemingly irrelevant, is the staple slippy slope argument. Point: both are wrong and both should/should’ve exercised more reasoned judgement. Caveman Ack just saying.

LightSquared raises another issue: Why this big interest in bringing broadband to rural America? Since when has Øbama prioritized anything for the benefit of gun-toting, Bible-hugging rural Americans? My gut says there’s a strategic political motive somewhere in here, that it’s part of a plan to ensure perpetual leftist control, but I can’t put my finger on what it might be.

For years within the telecom industry there have been persistent complaints that LightSquared majority owner Philip Falcone’s political connections with the White House and the Federal Communications Commission have led to political and regulatory favoritism for his company. Falcone is a hedge fund investor who made a fortune shorting subprime debt. He is worth $2.2 billion and has been close to the administration and to Democratic Party officials.

On Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was slated to testify before the House Armed Services Committee about the political patronage in the granting of fast-track waivers for the company. But Genachowski stood up the committee — he refused to appear. Said Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH):

I consider the chairman’s failure to show up today to be an affront to the House Armed Services Committee.

iWatch, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, has conducted an exhaustive investigation of LightSquared and its high-level Obama connections. They found that in addition to the president, Donald Gips — Obama’s former personnel chief — had $500,000 invested in LightSquared. Gips raised half a million dollars as a “bundler” for the president’s 2008 campaign, and now has the politically coveted position of U.S. ambassador to South Africa.

LightSquared is owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund, headed by billionaire investor Phil Falcone. He visited the White House and made large donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Soon after, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted LightSquared a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.

I wonder why more people aren’t questioning this Company, first I am pretty sure it is an overseas co. it is run by a Indian/Pakistani
and one of his goals is that all citizens have an electronic ID, I don’t know if that means all US citizens or we all become citizens of THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
I question anything this pretender to the throne has been pushing to extremes.
If this interferes with GPS that would mean our drones, spy satalittes, defense systems,etc.
Wake up people this admin. is out to destroy America and our way of life.
Watch the other hand.

JEMiller : 09/15/11 12:25
If there weren’t government (read tax/ratepayer) installation subsidies, there wouldn’t be a market – or at least it would be much smaller.
If the market were much smaller, the Chinese wouldn’t consider the industry worth manufacturing subsidies.
If the Chinese weren’t subsidizing the manufacture, the price would make the product even less viable economically, whether or not there were installation subsidies.
So the reality is that what we have is yet another government policy that – inefficiently, to be sure – shovels our tax dollars into Chinese pockets.
Free trade may be a framework around which one can build a trade policy, but it is not in itself a trade policy.
As for the reasons why ‘alternative energy’ programs are propped up – well, one might argue that ignorant bottom-feeders like Nostrils Waxman have to have a church to worship at.

People have remarked about the Obamination’s disrespectful postures and gestures. IMO it’s beyond disrespect, he’s a liberal globalist who thoroughly dislikes this country. See his body language in this video